Gateway to Graduate School: Faculty-Student Collaboration in Environmental and Organismal Biology

(Funded by the National Science Foundation through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act)

This brand new, merit-based program is designed to support and motivate students from groups historically underrepresented in the biological sciences, to prepare them for graduate school in biology. The core of the program is four years of intensive research mentoring by the TCNJ biology faculty.

The 10 freshman recruited each year will pursue the biology major and will work with faculty mentors on research programs in either environmental biology or the biology of classic model organisms, including plant-pathogen interactions and invasive plants, crayfish behavioral ecology, crab osmoregulation, mussel phylogeography, Drosophila oogenesis, developmental genetics of C. elegans and zebrafish, neural control of breathing in mouse, growth in Arabidopsis thaliana, and more.

Freshmen will do month-long mini-rotations through three environmental biology faculty-student research labs and three model-organism faculty-student research labs and then, as Sophomores, choose one of these labs as their research home for the next three years. Each semester, students will earn academic credit for research, building to a full course credit each semester as Juniors and Seniors. This long, sustained research collaboration with a practicing scientist will provide GGSB students with an unparalleled depth of experience that will provide a tremendous advantage in their pursuit of a graduate degree in Biology.  

GGSB students will receive a total of $18,800 in stipend support during the Junior/Senior years, which will include one summer of participation in TCNJ’s residential summer research program, the Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience (MUSE) [http://fscollab.wordpress.com/muse/].

The program also will provide

• Funds for research supplies
• Travel funds to regional and national professional scientific conferences, where students will present their collaborative research with their faculty mentors
• Support applying for a summer internship at a graduate research university
• A prep course for the Graduate Record Exam (GRE)
• Workshops on interviewing and writing for scientific publication and graduate school applications
• A visiting scientist series where students will have the opportunity to meet underrepresented scientists
• Visits to Ph.D-granting research universities to meet graduate students and professors

Those eligible to apply for the GGSB program are students from groups who are historically underrepresented in the biological sciences, as defined by the National Science Foundation, and who have been accepted into TCNJ for Biology or Open Options Science. These groups include African Americans, Alaska Natives, American Indians, Hispanic Americans, Native Pacific Islanders, and persons with disabilities.

For more information, contact Dr. Janet Morrison in the Department of Biology. She is TCNJ’s Director of Faculty-Student Scholarly and Creative Collaborative Activity, and director of the GGSB and MUSE programs.

morrisja@tcnj.edu  or 609-771-3091

Watch this page starting in December 2009 for new details about the program.

(last updated November 13, 2009)